This episode is devoted to showing you how you can shoot smartphone video, not specifically with a professional camera, but with a smartphone. I truly believe you don’t have to shoot professional photographs or professional video. People love who you are – an authentic. And if that smartphone camera is always by your side, they really are happy to consume the visual snippets of your life that you have to share with them of your business.

Using your smartphone to enhance your online presence is a valuable tool for your marketing kit. I was able to interview Frank Corrado, owner of Corrado’s Family Market and Corrado’s Pet Market in Wayne New Jersey on this very subject. . Frank is an avid photographer with a lot of professional equipment, but he uses his smartphone to grab pictures for his business. He’s very active in social media, sharing these great photos.

Here are some of the questions about smartphone photography I asked.

Now, we know that you have a professional camera. You have gear that you use for it. You have an appreciation for the art of photography. You understand the fundamental principles of it. Why use your smartphone?

“I’m nervous about it getting ruined or broken or damaged or stolen. I don’t bring it with me everywhere. I’m at work, I’m not going to carry around this big camera. I have my phone and I bring that around. Today, I took a great picture of prime beef steaks and I put it up on the web. I did it on my phone. It came up awesome. It’s just easy. I just take it on my pocket and I’ll get that picture and take a picture instantly. It’s like another set of eyes.”

What do you take food photos with? Do you take it with a particular app or do you use the native camera?

“I just use the native camera. Sometimes, I’ll just check and see like, they have that little edit, quick edit tool and an enhance tool. I’ll see how it looks on there. If it looks good then I’ll use it. I might enhance it with tones or hue.”

When you’re photographing with a smartphone, because you have this foundation in photography, you have an eye for your subject and you know how to frame your shots, tell me a little bit about your composition technique.

” Most of the time, probably 99% of the time, I’m just looking to fill the frame. I think in social media, when they pull it up on a picture, you don’t want the steak to be in the bottom right hand corner and have all these other stuff in the picture. I want them just to see the steaks or when we had purple asparagus the other day, I don’t want them to see the background with the signs and people there … I want them to see just the asparagus. That’s pretty common in the food industry and that’s what I do.”

Do you ever go into your pet store and photograph?

“I used to go in there a lot more when we had on-site grooming. I’d go in there and take pictures of the pets after they were groomed or while they’re getting groomed. We would text them or put them up on Facebook and then tag the owner in it.”

Do you ever take photographs of your staff or your team or your customers?

“My staff. Customers, no. Unless I know them then I would. Mainly staff like somebody’s birthday or veteran’s day if there’s a veteran that works for us, we’ll take a picture and say whatever they did for our country. Things like that. Maybe like a fun pictures like one of the staff members holding lobsters when on sale. That’s kind of fun stuff like that. Or in the kitchen during the holiday when the chefs are working real hard. I’ll take pictures of them. I think it’s important for our customers to see and be personalized with our staff.”

Do you ever create videos with your smartphone?

“Maybe last year or the year before, I was on this kick like, “I want people to know how to do certain things.” I made a video on how to make pizza at home with our pizza dough and cheese and stuff like that. I filmed our pizza guy making it and I put captions on the bottom, instructions on every step how to do it. We have it up on Youtube right now. It’s on our Facebook page in there somewhere. I’ve done a video how we make our fresh home made donuts in the store, the apple cider donuts. I did a video on that. That was more fun, not instructional but like more fun.”

Be sure to listen to this podcast, or watch the video below, to hear more of Frank Corrado’s insights as a photographer and a business owner.

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This is episode number 89, my interview with Michael Downey, head photography instructor at Unique Photo in Fairfield New Jersey and a great friend and he’s also featured in my book, ”Visual Marketing Secrets: how to use smartphone photography to engage online and attract more customers.”

Michael Downey – Pro Photographer

In addition to his teaching classes at Unique University at Unique Photo Camera Store in Fairfield, New Jersey, Michael owns and operates Michael Downey Photography out of Somerville, New Jersey and has photographed hundreds of moderate to high-end weddings throughout the northeast. He also teaches during photo walks and workshops, which I’ve been on myself. His images can be seen at New Century Artists’ Art Gallery in the Chelsea section of Manhattan. So you can see why I was so excited to interview him and gain his insights into photography, especially smartphone photography.

The selfie stick can make life easier for you, if you know how to use it the right way.

Did you ever take a selfie? Or will you actually admit it? My suspicion is that we’re all guilty of a selfie at some point in time, but some of us are more pront to selfies than others.

Do you want to know how to use a selfie stick the right way? Well in this quick video, I’m going to show you what I learned about the Wireless Mobile Phone Monopod. And it’s really easy to take your own selfies, videos and photos with a selfie stick really quickly. I’m going to show you the secret.

To learn more about my new book Visual Marketing Secrets™: How to Use Smartphone Photography to Engage Online and Get More Customers, click here.

Everyone with a smartphone is familiar with the term “selfie,” but most people never thought of using their smartphone as a powerful visual marketing tool. With this simple step-by-step guide, you’ll learn how to captivate your audiences with smartphone photography and never miss an opportunity to market your business online again.